Various Artists

Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake

Nick Drake's original producer Joe Boyd organized a series of tribute concerts around the world to celebrate the British folk legend. Way to Blue is a companion compilation featuring Robyn Hitchcock, Vashti Bunyan, Scritti Politti's Green Gartside, Lisa Hannigan, and others.

In 2010 and 2011, producer Joe Boyd spearheaded a series of live shows in tribute to Nick Drake, hand-picking performers to cover Drake’s songs. Boyd was not only a central figure in the 1960s folk revival on both sides of the Atlantic, but he produced Drake’s first two albums, Five Leaves Left in 1969 and Bryter Layter in 1970. Few knew Drake quite so well as Boyd, so few are so qualified to re-stage these songs in an affectionate tribute. The mood on Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake, which collects highlights from the concerts, is reverent and dignified, occasionally rethinking arrangements but mostly adhering to the familiar orchestral swells, piano runs, and jazzy guitar licks.

Perhaps that’s the problem. Especially in 2013, 14 years after the VW ad that turned every car buyer into a Pink Moon fan, Way to Blue is too rigid in its approach and too timid in its interpretations to challenge or enlarge our perception of Drake. The tracklist includes several generations of artists, from Vashti Bunyan to Luluc, but with precious few exceptions, they turn Drake’s songs into mumbly folk-pop-- aggressively decorous and strangely passive. In fact, aside from the atrocious backing vocals on Shane Nicholson’s version of “Poor Boy”, the performances are perfectly adequate, but who wants adequate when you can easily pull up the originals, which still sound lovely and intense and devastating.

Despite Green Gartside’s noble yet safe reading of “Fruit Tree”, the only artist who truly gets under the skin of Drake’s music is his contemporary Vashti Bunyan. She manages to overcome the spectacle of the historical venue and deliver a truly meaningful and disarming reinterpretation of “Which Will”, savoring certain syllables and twisting the words into new and strange shapes. By comparison, Lisa Hannigan’s cover of “Black Eyed Dog” sounds self-consciously eccentric, her warbles and coos too practiced, but that’s preferable to Teddy Thompson’s colorless take on “River Man”.

Is it their fault for sounding so passive in their performances, or is it Boyd’s fault for restricting the possibilities and keeping the project so beholden to Drake’s legacy? Most likely the blame rests with everyone, but in truth the very concept of Way to Blue seems flawed: The setting is far too public for Drake’s private ruminations, which reinforces the idea that he lived his pain for public consumption. Boyd and his cohorts aren’t inviting you to sympathize with that pain, but to experience it voyeuristically. Or, to borrow some insight from Boyd’s book White Bicycles, in which he discusses a recent concert by Aretha Franklin: “Waves of self-congratulatory affection passed back and forth between [Franklin and the audience]: she claiming credit for recognizing what they wanted to hear; the audience adoring themselves for being so hip as to want the ‘real thing.’ The music was caught in the middle, lifeless and predictable.”

(Editor's note: This album was reviewed from an advance copy that contained applause between the songs. The applause was later removed from the final release. The original review had references to the applause that have been deleted.)